Shares of the holding company that remained after Yahoo sold most of its assets to Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) and renamed itself Altaba Inc (NASDAQ:AABA) started trading Monday under the AABA ticker name. The main assets of Altaba now include Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA), where Altaba has a 15.5% stake, and Yahoo Japan where Altaba now has a 35.5% stake.
The deal with Verizon Communications was closed last week for $4.48 billion. The tech pioneer which will no longer operate as an independent internet firm once had a market capitalization of over $100 billion.
Global expansion
This comes as the chief executive officer of Oath, the entity that emerged after Verizon combined its two acquisitions – Yahoo and AOL, revealed that the new outfit was planning on expanding all over the world by launching more brands beyond the current portfolio.
“From a commitment standpoint, we’ve laid out a road map through 2020 to try to get to 2 billion consumers,” said Oath’s CEO, Tim Armstrong, at a Cannes Lions event.
Armstrong also added that Oath would be targeting annual revenues averaging between ten billion dollars and twenty billion dollars. At the moment both Yahoo and AOL properties have a monthly audience base of 1.3 billion where ad requests numbering 1 trillion are served monthly. Oath’s chief executive officer also pointed out that the firm had no intentions of directly competing with Facebook and Google as it wanted to remain a clean source of consumer data and traffic.
Restructuring and integration
Some of the tech and media brands that are now under Oath include AOL.com, Verizon’s Digital Media Services, HuffPost, Flickr, Yahoo Sports, Moviefone, TechCrunch, MAKERS, Tumblr, Yahoo Finance, Engadget, Yahoo Mail, and Build Studios.
After the deal between Yahoo and Verizon Communications was closed last week, Oath is now undergoing a process of restructuring since about 15% of the total workforce has to be laid off. Throughout this year, the ad-technology systems of AOL and Yahoo will operate separately but beginning next year, integration will begin with the best features of each platform being picked.
On Monday shares of Altaba Inc rose by 3.58% to close the day at $54.46.
